


something strange in your neighborhood

by paraserpiente



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV), Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Crossover, F/F, Femslash February, Femslash February 2019, Ghosts, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-17
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-10-27 06:57:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17761979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paraserpiente/pseuds/paraserpiente
Summary: "We’ve been contacted about a pilot project—a partnership, if you will, between ourselves and other smaller enforcement teams throughout the city," says Holt.OR: The 9-9 teams up with the Ghostbusters, to the mild bemusement of everyone involved.





	something strange in your neighborhood

**Author's Note:**

> Way back in the summer of 2016, Stephanie Beatriz said [what we were all thinking](https://twitter.com/iamstephbeatz/status/754214881042116608?lang=en).
> 
> That about sums it up, really.

Rosa has seen a lot of weird shit. 

The Serial Stiletto Stabber. Literally every dance performance Gina has been involved with. The escaped wombat of ’09, ’10, _and_ ’14.

Even so, she’d take another six Intimate Evenings With Ashley Angel Formerly and Forever of O*Town (courtesy Gina again, December 2013) before going up another one of these things. Maybe seven.

As if to prove her point, it slams up against the door she’s been bracing shut. The air around her fills with the odor of wet puppy belly and old meat. The door bows, creaks, holds, and then explodes, sending her half-falling across the room as she whips around to point her gun at the perp.

“This is not a _fucking_ B&E, Peralta,” Rosa screams into her radio, scuttling backward. The thing makes a damp hiccup of a sound. Its teeth, though translucent, are long; its jaw, such as it is, is more of a hinge, so that when it lolls its head back the whole top half flips backward, its thick, drooling tongue then free to whip back and forth through the empty air. “It’s a—a—“

“Ghost!” Jake yips over the line, triumphant.

Rosa doesn’t think it can see her—with its eyeballs facing the opposite direction, all she assumes it can see is the long, sopping train of hair going down its spine and leaving a trail of slime on the floor behind it—but it sure as hell is moving her way.

It’s between her and the only door, and the windows are long-rusted shut. “Shit,” she says, and fires off three times. No use; the bullets go right through it. Then the thing is on her, seizing her with two of its six limbs. She fights it, but it’s no use; it pulls her closer and closer to that hole of an exposed throat as she chokes on the smell of death and dirt and fur. She’s going to die here, in this stupid abandoned chemistry laboratory in even stupider Hoboken, and the stupidest thing of all is that Peralta is going to tell everyone at her funeral that it was a ghost that killed her.

“Duck!” a new voice hollers, and Rosa curls on sheer instinct alone as something bright zips through the air, hooking around the very top of the thing’s jaw as well as what smells like a sizable chunk of Rosa’s hair. The ghost jerks and pinwheels backward, ululating and dragging Rosa with it. Another bright line loops around its bottom pair of limbs like a lasso, and Rosa drops to the floor. As soon as she gets there, she rolls back toward the wall, so that by the time she’s upright again she’s aiming her gun at the shrieking, burbling thing now lying at the feet of three figures silhouetted against the hallway gloom.

Everyone looks at each other.

“Would you mind terribly putting your gun down?” asks the tallest one. Rosa _does_ mind, in fact, but she obeys. Barely. 

“Thanks,” she says, when she feels like her voice can work again. “Um. Who are you?”

“We’re a group of independent scientists who investigate Class Three to Class Five spiritual and spiritual-corporeal manifestations,” the one in the middle explains.

Jake skids into the room, covered in his own layer of green slime and followed closely by another woman in a jumpsuit, who seems mostly (correctly, Rosa feels) distracted by the thing still writhing on the floor. “Ghostbusters!” he practically yodels. “Ladies, I _love_ your work.”

“You’re not so bad yourself,” says the last figure, who is blonde, curly, and smiling at Rosa like she’s about to sell the pants out from under her. “Ladies.”

In hindsight, Rosa should have just asked to transfer then and there, all the well-fitting jumpsuits in the world be damned. 

—

Of course Rosa remembers the Incident. The 9-9 hadn’t been called in from Brooklyn, but news travels, and a hundred cops jerkily doing the Hustle under the control of a six-and-a-half-foot dude who looked one “Sweet calf raise, bro” away from lecturing everyone about keto wasn’t exactly going to stay west of the East River. But Rosa’s heard too many bar stories to truly believe anything she hasn’t seen with her own eyes, and she knows how fast a rumor of one raccoon with a grudge can turn into a half-dozen calls about teenage werewolves tearing the hell out of Bed-Stuy. So she’d been pretty sure at least fifty percent of the whole thing had been a hoax, with a healthy dash of adrenaline, rolling blackouts, and Yuengling six-packs enthusiastically working to embellish the other half.

Pretty sure.

“And they’re _ghosts_ ,” Santiago says in the conference room Monday morning, looking baffled at the bandage on Rosa’s arm. “I mean. Barring the obvious exaggerated elements, aren’t they supposed to be—largely transparent? Relying on telekinetic energy, if that?”

“Guess not,” Rosa grunts, poking at her bicep. “This thing didn’t seem to need it.”

“Your report called it an ‘ectoplasm burn,’” Santiago says. “Your words, or the…scientists’?”

“I think you mean the _GHOSTBUSTERS_ ,” Peralta says, striding in with Boyle close behind. “The _GHOSTBUSTERS_ , Amy.”

“Yes, I know what they’re called on television,” Santiago says. “Why are you yelling? We can hear you, we’re all in the room.”

“I want the spirits to hear me,” Peralta says. “From _beyond the grave_.”

“Rosa could have died, Jake! I would have thought you’d take this a little more seriously.”

“It’s fine,” Rosa says. “I’m fine.” 

“She’s fine! Thanks to…the _GHOSTBUSTERS_.”

“Yeah, but how many more of those things are out there? We need to be prepared, or at least equipped.” 

“ _If_ you’re all finished,” Holt says. Santiago jumps about a mile, but at least she shuts up. Holt strides up to the front of the room so he can stare at them all in turn. “It wasn’t entirely a coincidence that the ‘Ghostbusters’ happened to arrive at the scene at nearly the same time Diaz and Peralta did. We’ve been contacted about a pilot project—a partnership, if you will, between ourselves and other smaller enforcement teams throughout the city. When an officer in Hoboken alerted me to the abnormal breaking-and-entering description, it sounded plausible that it could also be from…activity from outside our jurisdiction.” Holt shrugs. “So I sent Diaz and Peralta, and called in backup.”

“Sir,” Santiago says, looking stricken.

“Had it been a standard breaking and entering situation, the scientists had agreed to remain out of range. And if it wasn’t, I had every confidence that between Diaz, Peralta, and the ‘Ghostbusters,’ the thing would be swiftly contained. And I was correct, wasn’t I?”

Out of the corner of Rosa’s eye, Peralta nods, practically buried in the neck of his hoodie with glee. But Rosa has other priorities.

“Sir,” she says. “Partnership?” 

“Ah,” says Holt. “Well. I’d hoped to introduce the concept a bit more formally, but this opportunity seemed too valuable to waste.” He nods at Sarge, who takes over.

“You all remember the, uh. Incident a few months back,” he says.

“Sure,” Scully says. “Big ol’ slime thing, runnin’ around Midtown.”

“Smelled like hot dogs,” Hitchcock says mournfully.

“We hear things,” Scully says.

“Right,” Jeffords says. “Slime things, and. Worse. We’ve received word that the source of the attack may not have been completely contained. That there may be copycats throughout the boroughs, and spreading.”

“To Brooklyn?” Boyle asks. “To—to Queens?”

“To Atlantic City,” Gina intones, shuddering.

“And spreading,” Jeffords repeats, looking determined. “Captain Holt thinks that we have the capability to locate the source in Brooklyn and address the issue, and maybe help other precincts too. But we can’t do it alone.”

“So the partnership,” Rosa says again.

“It’s only as needed,” Jeffords says.

—

As it turns out, “as needed” looks like calls of a drunk and disorderly on the Seventh Avenue platform a week and a half later. The calls, of course, aren’t entirely accurate: Disorderly, yes, but drunk, no, unless sitting in a neon-green reanimated corpse’s liver for decades counts as barrel-aging.

“Please don’t make a ‘spirits’ joke,” Santiago groans to Peralta, who visibly bites back a grin as he scurries away from the tracks.

“At least this one doesn’t have tentacles,” Rosa says. They’d cleared the area of civilians, just in case, but the thing doesn’t seem to be doing anything particularly threatening. Then again, the lights flicker every time it moans in the pit down near the tunnel entrance, and a few stray beer cans Peralta has experimentally pitched its way have been summarily shot down the tunnel away from them at ear-piercing speeds. Rosa doesn’t want to think about what happens to the Q train when it pulls in. She sighs. “Santiago. Did you, uh. Contact the partnership?”

“Right when we walked in,” Santiago says. “We do _not_ have the right ordnance for this kind of confrontation. Jake! Stop with the cans.”

“C’mon, Amy, it’s not going to—oh,” Peralta says, as the thing’s noises get louder. The lights flicker again, then go dark completely, and all Rosa can see is the eerie green glowing from the tracks.

“Duck!” Santiago screams, as a volley of beer cans, white-hot with velocity, pinwheels over them and into the subway tiles lining the platform.

Rosa resists the urge to fire off a round in response. The cracks from the tiles are continuing to spiderweb outward, and she’s getting the sinking sensation that the thing wants it as dark as possible. Chunks begin to fall from the subway entrance behind them. “Shit. Amy, do you have flares?”

" _Flares_?” Santiago starts, then yelps as something whips past her, smelling like burning fur. “Oh god, dead rat. Oh god, oh god.”

“Let’s move,” Rosa says. “Now.” But the entrance behind them is crumbling faster, and Rosa would rather take her chances with flying trash than with being buried alive. Barely. She points toward the door about thirty yards down. “That way!”

They spring for that entrance, but apparently that’s exactly what the thing wants, because the platform itself starts to crack. Peralta vaults it, with Santiago close behind. For a split second, Rosa thinks she’s got it in the bag, but right before she leaps something hot and liquid razes her calf. She grunts, more out of surprise than real pain, and stumbles backward just in time to keep from falling into the widening crevice. Now, though, Jake and Amy are on one side, and she’s on the other.

“Not. Again,” Rosa mutters over Santiago’s panicked yelling into her radio. She turns to face the tracks. The garbage smell is worsening, and through the smoke and the darkness she can see two hands creeping out of the pit. “Fuck it,” she says, and reaches for a stun gun. If bullets won’t help her, electricity might.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” a voice yells from down the tunnel from the other side of the thing’s lair. Rosa tries to keep her knees from sagging with relief. “Sorry, we’re here, sorry!”

Before the scientists even get into view, an bolt is arcing toward the thing. It shrieks, and smoke roils everywhere, but the shaking and cracking stops. The hot garbage smell does not, but without the imminent threat of spectral doom, that’s basically your standard New York August. Rosa can deal with that.

The four scientists finally round the corner, jumpsuits and all. “Took you long enough,” Rosa says. Her voice trembles a little, and she coughs.

“Sorry,” the redhead repeats. She really does look like she’s about to cry. “Brooklyn is _far_.” 

“Thank God for Patti, really,” another says. Ally? Annie? They’d done introductions once before, but it’s amazing how two rounds with the post-living really gives the mind a good scrubbing of those kinds of things. “You and your tunnels.” 

“All in a day’s work,” Patti—Rosa assumes—says, returning the blonde’s fist bump. “Hey, you OK?”

“Fine,” Rosa mutters. “I’m fine. Thanks. Again.” She clears her throat. “Do you have to…trap it, or something?”

“Done and done,” the blonde says, decisively spinning a wheel on the contraption she just clanked shut.

“Not that we’re short of Subway Ghouls, but it can’t hurt to study the spectrum,” the redhead says.

The blonde just smiles, hoisting her gun back over her shoulder. She nods at Rosa, just once, then turns to head back down the tunnel.

“See ya,” Rosa says. 

— 

“We have to stop meeting like this,” Holtzmann grins, the third time the Ghostbusters rescue Rosa’s ass. Frankly, Rosa is inclined to agree. At least Boyle’s the damsel—or dame, whatever—in distress this time, up near the ceiling with a ghost in a fairly impressive bustle and a table setting that has, frankly, seen less depressing days. 

“I think the….being just wants him to eat, if it helps,” Santiago says. 

“I’d like to not. Do any more of that,” Boyle says from above, sounding strangled. There’s a frantic clattering of plates, and he continues hastily, “Not that your cooking isn’t. Delicious! Ma’am.”

Holtzmann glances at Yates. “One-and-done excy, don’t you think? Probably not worth a plasma shot.”

“I’m onboard,” Yates says, reaching into what looks like a fanny pack to grab a handful of white powder. She quickly dashes it in a circle below the suspended table. 

“Wait,” Rosa says as Holtzmann kneels to light the circle aflame. “Shouldn’t we…get him down?”

Holtzmann just looks at her, blank, but Tolan says “tablecloth.” She walks over and yanks one off one of the mildewing tables, and Rosa gets her point immediately: It looks a little dusty, but intact. She grabs a corner, Santiago grabs a third, and Gilbert takes the fourth. “Boyle! Jump!”

“I’d—I’d rather not, thanks,” says Boyle. All Rosa can really see from near the ceiling is a half-rotted hoop skirt and Boyle’s knuckles, white where he’s clenching the chair.

“Jump or fall, little man,” Tolan says.

“Count of three,” Holtzmann warns. “One—two—" 

Boyle shouts, the tablecloth buckles but holds, and the circle around them ignites with a ripping sound before going out just as abruptly. They have just enough time to half yank, half roll the tablecloth, with Boyle in it, away from the circle before the table and chairs fall, with putrid, maggot-ridden meat and cheese splatting around them the only evidence of the former in-house chef.

“That was upsetting,” Boyle says, struggling to extricate himself from the tablecloth. “On so many levels.”

“Sorry, bud,” Yates says. “Talk about ‘good enough to die for,’ huh?”

“No thank you,” Boyle says, looking green. “I mean, thank you. But.” He heaves, gives up, and runs for the exit. There’s a long, creaky silence, punctuated by the not-too-distant sounds of throwing up. 

“So,” Holtzmann says. “Brooklyn. Beer?” 

“God, please,” Santiago says.

—

“What I don’t understand,” Peralta says, “is, like. Why a dragon?” 

“Why not?” Tolan shrugs. “Whatever these weirdos get their minds set on.” 

“Sure, I understand someone posthumously manifesting their worst habits or innermost desires,” Peralta continues, for some reason. “But a dragon? Just a straight-up dragon?” 

“This is really more Yates and Gilbert’s purview,” Tolan says. “Holtzy and I shoot first—“

“Ask questions later, I got it, I got it.” Peralta takes a long swig. Unfortunately, it seems to reinvigorate him. “Did a dragon just die in medieval times and hang around for vengeance? What’s it even got to be still mad about?”

“He doesn’t know dragons aren’t real,” Santiago hisses.

Peralta whips around, stricken. “I think you mean _extinct_ , Amy!”

Rosa takes the opportunity to sidle to the bar, where Yates and Gilbert are enthusiastically recapping the evening’s activities to Sarge and Holt. 

“It appears as if you are exceedingly well equipped to handle these ectoplasmic fluctuations,” says Holt. He sounds impressed, possibly.

“We’ve certainly done substantial research on the various manifestations,” demurs Gilbert. “But there’s always more to learn, of course.” 

“Really it’s a question of human power,” says Yates. Despite the noise and the beer and the company, her cheerful face looks drawn. “There’s just so many of them, and _they_ don’t need to sleep.” 

“Hmm,” says Holt. “Yes, given the current record of officer interaction with these specimens, I’m concerned we may just be complicating the matter rather than simplifying it.” 

“We’re happy to help any way we can, sir.”

A prickle inches its way down Rosa’s spine. She’s not as loud about winning as Santiago is, but that doesn’t mean she won’t tip a few tables to get people to stand up straight when they’re talking to her. She’s the best, the 9-9 is the best, and she’ll be damned if some no-quarter post-death jerk-for-rotting-brains is going to make anybody think twice about that.

She strides over to Holtzmann, who has her feet kicked up on the same table on which Boyle has his forehead resting. He’s not asleep, but his eyes are closed, and Holtzmann seems content to sip her pitch-black beer in silence.

“Hey,” Rosa says. “That thing. You know what it was called?”

Holtzmann squints at her over her glasses, then glances at Yates and Gilbert. “I could guess.”

“But you know how to kill it.”

A smile. “Yes.” 

Boyle makes a tiny sound, almost a yip, the kind of sound her neighbor’s Bichon might make if it had a bad nightmare. Rosa has always been a golden retriever kind of gal, but she lays a quelling hand on his shoulder anyway. “And you know how _I_ could kill it.”

The smile widens. “ _Ye-e-es._ ”

— 

“You’re sure the captain approves of this?” Santiago asks.

“He wants us to be more capable,” Rosa says, not lying. “Besides, aren’t you sick of getting your ass saved by these nerds?”

“Hey!” Gilbert says.

“You’re wearing two lab coats,” Rosa says. 

“Safety isn’t _nerdy_ ,” Gilbert retorts. “And I’m not sure how much I like this whole training montage situation either.” She stabs her pen in the direction of Peralta’s general din. Ghostbusters HQ is more spacious than the precinct, but it isn’t exactly cavernous, and Rosa has to admit that the frequency of laser noises might unsettle a lesser woman. “ _Some_ people are getting a little too…fancy free.”

“Some people want to kick some ghost butt!” yells Peralta. “Pew-pew-pew!” Really, the man has the ears of a bat. Santiago looks pained.

“I just worry that we’re overstepping our boundaries,” she says, adding louder, “and I don’t think you need to add your own sound effects!”

Holtzmann, running by, pulls up short. Her hair is a curly riot over her forehead, her forehead streaked with dark grease, and she’s smiling like she has a secret she can’t wait to tell. Barely missing a beat, she yanks a ghost-gun from her holster, hip-checks Amy to the side, and blasts a beaker right out from under Gilbert’s nose about five yards away.

Over the sound of Gilbert’s protests, she turns her grin on Santiago, then pivots to Rosa. The gun is still smoking, but she palms the muzzle, thunking the solid weight into Rosa’s palm. She doesn’t blink as often as maybe she should, Rosa notices. But that smile hangs on, until it’s not so much a brag as a dare. 

“ _What_ boundaries?” she says.

Rosa doesn’t smile back, and she doesn’t look away. She takes the gun. She aims. She fires. Crashing happens. Santiago, blurred in Rosa’s peripherals, winces so hard her whole body folds in half.

Holtzmann doesn’t look away either. “I think that might have been our last coffee maker,” she says, but she doesn’t look that upset about it.

—

They make her pay for the coffee maker, but only because Yates is a stickler about the monthly budget. (Tolan, winking, had slipped Rosa a 20. The next time Rosa comes back, she brings burritos. It’s just about even.) 

(She doesn’t see Holtzmann much after that, but at this point, it’s more about practice, not skill sets. Holtzmann’s a decent teacher, to be clear—she’s not shy about kicking feet apart to adjust a stance or setting her chin on a shoulder, voice barely audible as she describes just the kind of spectral evisceration her favorite toys can bring to the table _if you just steady these elbows, Officer Diaz, this recoil is a rrrrrascal_ —but she’s kinda crap at being patient enough for drills. It’s probably better for everyone’s concentration anyway.)

(Rosa doesn’t break any more coffee makers. No matter what you put in her hands, she knows how to hit a target.) 

—

The first time Rosa nabs her own ghost-perp is unremarkable in the grand scheme of things. She and Santiago had been dispatched after the manager of a comedy club had reported what sounded like a window break in the basement as she was closing up. They were halfway there when the radio blared again:  _“Club manager says burglars are destroying property_.” 

“Shit,” Rosa says, and speeds up.

The manager meets them outside, looking grim. “I don’t know if it’s frat bro idiots or someone with a grudge, or what,” she says. “But I can’t have this shit coming out of my paycheck. We’re barely making rent as is.” 

“We’ll send you a copy of the police report,” Amy promises. Rosa is already on her way through the front door. She has a hunch, one that’s confirmed when she cranes her neck and spots the green glow pulsing from the bottom of the basement stairs.

“Poltergeist?” Amy whispers from behind her. 

“Or a dead comic with a grudge,” Rosa says.

“I’ll ping the other team,” Amy says.

“Fine,” Rosa says. “But I’m not going to wait around.”

Amy’s disapproval rolls off her in waves. It makes the hairs on the back of Rosa’s neck prickle. But all she says is, “I brought my proton pack. I’m assuming you have yours?” 

“Always,” says Rosa. She waits for Amy to finish her text, then nods down into the dark. “I’ll go in, you run backup?” 

“Seems like I don’t have a choice,” Amy says, voice too low to convey much sarcasm. 

“You’re a champ, Santiago,” Rosa says, and eases down into the dark. Sure enough, when she opens the door, the first thing she sees is the glowing outline of some dude in a fedora methodically overturning crates. Another guy in a tank top watches, drinking what appears to be a…ghost beer? Neither notices her come in. 

“Hey,” Rosa says. “Don’t you have anything better to do? Like…” She’s dated a few comics. “Get a ghost therapist?”

The drinker whips around and snarls. His beer drops to the floor and out of existence. He stands, mouth unhinging, growing teeth.

“Why is it always the teeth,” Rosa says, and shoots him in the face with her proton-pistol. He falls, twitching, but she’s taken her attention off Crate-Destroyer. He gets it back by hurling one straight at her head. She ducks, but the second one gets her in the belly, knocking her to the floor. “Amy!” she wheezes, and Santiago rushes in, gun up. She zaps the ghost before he can get another crate up, then gets Drinker one more time for good measure. Rosa staggers upright, looking around. There’s glass everywhere, but most of the damage seems to be superficial.

“Thanks,” she says. 

“Of course,” Amy says. Her jaw is still tight. “So I’m assuming you brought a containment chamber for these guys?” Rosa did not, in fact, do that, and Amy clearly knows as much.

"Oh,” Rosa says. “Well.”

“Uh-huh,” Amy says. “It’s a _partnership,_ Diaz.”

“I know,” Rosa grits out. She’s saved from the rest of the lecture by the sound of feet clomping down the stairs.

“Hey,” Tolan says. “We got a couple ghoulies?”

“Amy and I took care of it,” Rosa says. “Just need a way to get ‘em out of here.”

“Nice,” Tolan says.

Gilbert, behind her, raises her eyebrows. “Mm,” she says. “Proton pistols?”

“Yes,” Rosa says. “Problem?” 

“No,” Gilbert says, meaning _yes_. “It’s just that for one-off incidents, we really prefer a net-bag when possible. It preserves more of the ectoplasmic integrity for further study.” She pauses, just a shade too long. “I know we’ve been training together, but that’s really only for emergencies.” 

“But thank you for the help!” Tolan says. “We can take it from here!”

“Sure,” Rosa says. “Always happy to help out.” She leaves, already bracing herself for Amy’s _I don’t want to say I told you so_ in the car.

For better or for worse, Jake can always be counted on to need less convincing.

“Don’t call them,” Rosa hisses, a few weeks later.

“I’m not _going_ to,” Jake hisses back. He peeps over the bodega windowsill at the three figures systematically shattering Coke bottles. “So how do you want this to go down? Exorcise first, ask questions of their smoking post-corpses later?”

Rosa opens her mouth, then hesitates. The things have backpacks, and ripped jeans, and too-big plaid shirts that keep interfering with their attempts to hurl bags of Ruffles down the bodega aisles. They’re all that weird snot-green color ghosts get in the afterlife, but Rosa swears she can see the barest edge of frosted tips. She gets the weird feeling they’re trying to one-up each other, almost—it reminds her, unsettlingly, of being 12 and trying to shotgun ICEEs in the back of the Circle K before recital.

This had not been part of Jeffords’ brief, although he had mentioned the owner calling about his “security system malfunctioning” after a break-in. The owner in question cowers behind the counter, clutching a rosary.

“They’re…kids?” Jake says.

The things knock their shoulders together and slam into the magazine rack, sending a dozen _Irregulation Hotties_ fanning through the store. When they laugh, their mouths hinge open way, way too wide. Rosa palms the proton pistol Tolan had loaned her. “No.”  

Jake shrugs and holsters his own. “Worth a try,” he says, hoisting himself up and dusting himself off.

Rosa scrambles after him. “Jake! Wait!”

But it’s too late. No sooner does Peralta walk into the store, sing-songing “Heyyyy, pals, how’s about that new Instagram meme?” then the things are on him, fast like cats running from a vacuum and just as skittery. One shoves Jake into a shelf full of Corn Nuts and he yelps, snacks raining around him; another takes its backpack and beans him in the stomach with it. But the third is what Rosa’s most concerned with, because it’s spotted the corndog oven tray, and a pan full of sizzling grease is suddenly bobbing and sloshing toward the nape of Jake’s extremely unprotected neck. Rosa takes a tiny, horrified moment to envision what Amy will do if she brings Jake home with a debilitating fast-food injury, then shoves through the door.

She doesn’t have time to aim her gun, but she _does_ shield her face as she high-kicks the tray up and away from the two of them. The ghost makes a sound like—well, like an Evanescence song, if Rosa’s being perfectly honest with herself—and charges her. Rosa dodges, gets the gun up, and _bam:_ The ghost is on the ground, jittering, and Rosa scrabbles in her bag for one of the spirit mini-cans she’d made sure to stick in her bag from HQ. 

“Behind you!” Jake wheezes, and she rolls just in time for, holy shit, the entire soda machine to graze her shoulder as it’s slammed to the floor. She gets ahold of the can, pops the top, and tosses it toward the Grease Ghost while Mr. Sodapop readies himself with a six-pack of Pepsis. “Come on, asshole,” she growls, and the thing tilts its head. The bottles start shaking. As do all the bottles in the refrigerated section.

“Down!” she says, tackling Jake to the ground. There is a tiny, but significant, popping sound. Logically, she knows that a shaken-up Orange Crush shouldn’t be more than a mild annoyance, but the ghost teens appear to have carbonation-enhancing powers, because the streams hitting them sting like a whole hive of tiny, angry bees. 

“Oh, it’s _on_ ,” Jake mutters, swiping a hand over his now-dripping face. “Ugh, my eyelids are sticky.”

“What, are you going to have to shower for a whole ten minutes now?” Rosa drawls. He takes the hand she offers and digs in his coat pocket with the other, producing something that looks like a taser and smells like Orange Crush.

“Soda stuff is _my_ move!” he yells, skidding down toward the figure now doubled-over with ghost laughter by one of the pools of sludge. It straightens up, but Jake gets there first, pressing a button on the not-taser and aiming it straight for the thing. A crackling mist settles over it and it freezes in place, only its eyes still moving. “Try shaking _this_ can,” Jake says, and then there is one.

It’s just been staring at them both, mouth hanging open. She slowly, carefully, trains her gun on the thing. “Hey,” she says. “I highly recommend you knock it the fuck off.”

It tilts its head to the side, then reaches up and—she tenses—grabs at its own face, pulling and pulling until its eyes are at the top of long, gaping sockets, its cheeks stretched out past its jawline, that mouth still open. It’s in a Billabong shirt, for god’s sake. And it’s making a noise that sounds like…speech. 

“I want,” it burbles. “I want, I want, _I want_ …” 

“What?” Jake says, and when Rosa glances at him he looks pale. Haunted. 

“I want my _mo-o-o-o-m_ ,” it screeches, and that’s when it lunges for them, and that’s when Gilbert shoots it in the back from the open door of the store.

“Fuck!” Rosa says, still looking at the space where it was, unable to process the fact that it’s down. Her adrenaline is zinging. She might throw up. “Fuck, Gilbert, it was talking to us!” 

“They don’t talk,” Gilbert says. Her voice is flat. She’s unpacking equipment to stow the spirit cans, having efficiently and silently packaged the third. The one who asked for its mom. “You should have called us. They don’t talk.”

“That one was talking,” Jake says, and Rosa feels an overwhelming surge of affection for him, even with his eyelashes spiked with drying soda and a delicate three-day stubble of Corn Nut patina dusting his cheeks. “And it had been working as security here. Maybe—“

“No maybe,” Yates says from the door, quietly but firmly. “You can’t let ‘em get to you, folks. They’ll make you crazy.”

“It’s like a parrot,” Gilbert says. “They’re just mimicking whatever they think you want to hear.” 

“I didn’t want to hear that shit,” Rosa says. Her voice is harsher than she means it to be. Gilbert stands up.

“Well, they know that too.”

Rosa suddenly can’t be here anymore, in this too-crowded bodega that smells like Yuengling and Cheetos. “Peralta,” she says, hating herself for it but knowing he’ll let her get away with it, “can you get a statement from the—the owner? Figure out how…yeah. How this happened.”

“You got it, Diaz,” he says. Bless that boy.

"I'm going home," she says. "Sorry." 

She shoulders her way past Yates in the door, who raises her hand to give her a pat on the shoulder but then (wisely) doesn’t actually make contact. Holtzmann and Tolan are outside, looking as casual as anyone can when they’re visibly bristling with weaponry. Tolan just nods in her direction, but Holtzmann peels off, walks beside her for a few paces. Rosa doesn’t actually know what direction the train is in. 

“Hey,” Holtzmann says eventually. “I liked that move with the tray. Slick.”

Rosa stops, turns, stares at her. “How long were you guys out there?”

“I got a little alert-doodad,” Holtzmann says, tapping what looks like a watch. “The others caught up.” 

Abruptly, a hot flush of shame floods Rosa’s neck and face, like she’s been caught cheating at cards to make her little cousins cry. “Why didn’t you…help?”

Holtzmann shrugs. “Didn’t look like you needed it.” 

They look at each other for a long minute. Deep in Rosa’s gut, a churning, fist-tight mass unclenches, ever so slightly. In its place is fatigue, and sadness, and a pit of something dark and seething, something that scares her to look over the edge of.

What she means to say, and does say, is “I’m just gonna head home.” But what comes out of her mouth right after is, “Do you want to come with me?”

Holtzmann has the face of someone who meets the pit for breakfast. “Sweetheart,” she says. “I sure do.” 

— 

Here’s what Rosa should have probably remembered about Holtzmann: She’s inventive.

Here’s what Holtzmann should have definitely remembered about Rosa: She’s quick on her feet.

Here’s what the two of them should have remembered about each other: Each of them always, by hook or by crook or by unconvincing but passionate threat, gets her way. 

—

“So,” Rosa says to her mirror. Her lips are swollen. Her hair is mussed. She has a bruise the size of a quarter blooming right beneath her collarbone. “It’s been a minute.”

There is silence, both from the mirror and the other side of the bathroom door. She holds her breath for a second, then continues.

“You’re not really. Ready. For something serious right now.” Not since Adrian. Not since Marcus. When Rosa looks at her life, she sees a lot of intense men looking at her and seeing the perfect key slotted in the lock of their greatest ambitions, whether that’s orchestrating a Venezuelan coup or settling down with two kids and a dog in West Orange. She likes to be useful. But at the end of the day, she likes to…do the using? 

That doesn’t feel right.

“I’m using my time,” she whispers. That’s not quite it, either, but it feels close enough for her to swing the bathroom door open and see Holtzmann, rumpled and sleepy, sitting up in her bed smiling at her. The bottom drops out of her stomach.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” Holtzmann—Jillian, Rosa guesses, because maybe you should call someone by their first name when they’ve had their face between your legs? “Are you practicing a speech?”

“No!” Rosa says. Then: “Yeah, actually.”

Jillian—OK, fuck, Holtzmann—quirks a smile at her. “Is it about how many times I made you come?”

“It’s related,” Rosa says, and watches the pleased flush spread over Holtzmann’s throat and collarbone, her small breasts and nipples starting to perk in the cool of the AC. Holtzmann clears her throat, and Rosa jerks her eyes up. “It’s about you and me,” she clarifies. 

Something in Holtzmann’s face shifts, just for a second, before she’s leaning over the bed to grab her button-down. “Don’t sweat it, boss,” she says. “Colleagues, business, pleasure, I get the gist.”

“No!” Rosa says. “It’s—I don’t want to move too fast.”

“No, I hear you,” says Holtzmann. She reaches up: a stretch, not a beckon. “I’ll get out of your way.” 

Rosa moves toward her without even thinking, letting Holtzmann tangle a hand in her hair, almost painful, then outright painful. Fuck, she wants to get on her knees. She wants to wrestle Holtzmann again, smack her muscular thigh with the flat of her palm, hear her yelp and growl before she sinks her teeth into Rosa’s shoulder. She wants to make Holtzmann pancakes. She wants Holtzmann out of her apartment. She wants to spend the day in the bathtub. She wants to do whatever she wants, with no one, not Peralta or Holtzmann or a teenage ghost or anyone else, needing a damn thing from her.

It’s that last that makes her close her mouth as Holtzmann kisses her. It’s what makes Rosa gently push her off. 

“I’m not really looking for a—" 

“Relationship right now,” Holtzmann says, taking the words right out of her. “Who could be?” 

It should feel good, letting the door swing shut.

—

“Hey,” Santiago says, thunking a stack of folders down on Rosa’s desk. “Has Holt talked to you today?”

Rosa grunts.

“I just don’t get it,” Santiago continues. “I mean, sure. There were a few mishaps. Maybe more than a few. But the learning curve is steep!” 

Sometimes, if you let Santiago talk herself in circles long enough, she persuades herself that her argument is the right one after all and that your affirmational input is no longer needed. Rosa glances at her computer monitor. Boyle, for no discernible reason, has sent her a string of spaghetti emojis. A message from Jake appears onscreen: a single, solitary _= (_ .

She jerks her head back toward at Amy. “Wait, what’d Holt say?”

Amy huffs, quietly, but it’s not like she isn’t used to repeating herself. “The partnership. It’s a bust.”

Rosa jolts up. Every hair on the back of her neck is standing upright, adrenaline coursing through her to settle white-hot in her teeth. “What?” she grunts. 

Santiago tilts her chin up, pouting just a little. Rosa understands, somehow, that it isn’t aimed at her. “I guess…I guess priorities didn’t work out.” 

“It was a good project, Amy.” 

“It was a good experiment,” Santiago can’t help but correct. She wilts a little. “It’s not like we got training for this at the Academy.”

“No,” Rosa says. She doesn’t smile at Amy, but she does blink once at her deliberately, like a cat blowing a kiss, and then moves for Holt’s office.

Holt sees them coming even before they get inside. “It’s not my decision, Officer Diaz.”

“That’s crap, sir,” Rosa spits. Despite Santiago’s long neck and squared shoulders, she sees her twisting her hands behind her back. She presses on. “The partnership was a mutual agreement, and dissolving it must have been too.”

“That is the nature of mutual partnerships, Diaz,” says Holt. He hasn’t gotten up, and somehow that infuriates her more. “When one party decides it is no longer in its best interest to continue, decisions must be made accordingly.”

“It was in Brooklyn’s best interest,” Rosa forces out. She doesn’t even know why she’s so mad. She’s failed at things before. You don’t take ten years of ballet without learning when to make long eye contact with yourself in the mirror and decide it’s just not going to happen. But this was new, and exciting, and significant. It felt important. And she can’t help but feel like it’s her fault it’s gotten snatched away somehow.  

“Well,” Holt says. He clears his throat, fiddles with his flag. “The 9-9 performing at its best is also what’s good for Brooklyn.” He looks up at her. “I, for one, am glad that we were given the opportunity, however briefly, to let our squad shine.” 

There’s no reasoning with him, and besides, Rosa doubts it will make any difference. She nods and swallows. “Thanks.”

Amy catches up with her outside. “Hey,” she says. “I don’t know what happened.”

 _I do_ , Rosa thinks. “I think maybe they just got tired of rescuing us,” she says. The fatigue is back, and she desperately wants to go shoot plasma into something. Instead, she makes a beeline for the door to the gym, because at least the bag won’t grow a bunch of teeth and/or start calling her _Auntie_.

“They didn’t have to rescue you!” Santiago’s mouth is set in a stubborn line, and Rosa wonders how much Jake has told her about the bodega encounter. Probably all of it. “You were good at it.” 

“Not that good,” Rosa says. Deep down, she knows Holt’s right. Even if they had learned to shoot and exorcise with the best of them—all four of the best of them—Rosa’s maybe not cut out for this shit. She’s been having nightmares, waking up with tears pricking the corners of her eyes, feeling like she’d failed someone whose face had become a blur every other heartbeat. Yates, Gilbert, Tolan, they’d never mentioned anything. 

Holtzmann had slept like a baby, as far as she could tell.

“It’s hard to have your brain in two places,” is all she can really get out. Her throat feels like it’s full of dust. Amy doesn’t look like she understands. Well, of course she doesn’t. If she focused on a single thing, she’d probably develop telekinesis and start shooting lasers everywhere. And then they’d have a supervillain situation on their hands, and Peralta is so not cut out to be a sexy sidekick, though he’d probably get a mega kick out of the fishnets, and she can already envision how Gina would have _such_ a meltdown over it all, because if anyone has the panache to take over Lower Manhattan, _it is certainly not any of you bitches._

Rosa could use some more sleep, maybe. 

“Anyway. Thanks for going in there with me.”

Santiago’s hands flex and tighten, which is the tell Rosa gets before she rushes her up in a hug. “I believe in the team,” Santiago says into her hair, and Rosa stands stock still until she gets it out of her system.

“It’ll be OK, Amy,” she allows, and then: “Me, too.”

— 

Life goes on. How could it not?

Rosa stops listening to the news much. More and more hotspots are starting to flare up all around the city, and sometimes the destruction really kicks itself up into an Incident before the others seem to get there. They’re only four people, after all. And the one time she caught a flash of sun-gold hair in a camera lens, a pair of goggles hastily shoved up above a dirty, wan face, she’d felt her pulse in her throat. She’d snarled at the guy behind the counter at the gyro place to _turn that shit off, already_.

One night, she has one glass of Macallan too many and texts a number she never labeled in her contacts.

 _Hey_ , she writes. Pauses. Starts, _Are you OK?_ Then erases it. Instead: _I don’t think you should have told them to break off the partnership_.

She stares at her phone, drinks another three fingers, then chases it with half a box of Triscuits and three glasses of tap water. She’s getting too old to roll in hungover on Thursday mornings, even on quality scotch. 

There’s still nothing by the time she’s washed her face and flossed. But just as she’s about to close her eyes, a flare of white-blue lights up the room. She snatches it, blinks twice to clear the fuzziness from her eyes.

All it says: _I didn’t_.

For some reason, this doesn’t make her feel any better.

The police blotter is getting steadily weirder, of course. New Yorkers aren’t idiots; they know that the green slime bubbling up out of their sinks isn’t just the landlord neglecting his mildew duties for the third month in a row. The song goes “Who you gonna call?” for a reason. But there are other, less obvious signs—demure substitute teachers glowing suddenly green and hurling globes through the windows at a specific charter school on the Upper East Side. All the garbage from all the trucks in the city whirling into a cyclone, which deposits itself outside the offices of City Hall. The shrill fury of a baby crying at night, somewhere in an apartment building where no children have lived for years, in a corner no one can find. Sure, they’ll call the Ghostbusters, when there’s ghosts to bust. But otherwise, it goes straight to 9-1-1 to sort out.

The dispatchers have been trained in where to direct them, naturally. Every so often, though, one slips in, and it’s how Rosa and Charles end up talking to a young woman gone ashen with fear outside a funeral home on 21st. Beside her, a car is flipped over.

“It was my nonno,” she insists. Her mouth is trembling. “We—we put him in the coffin and he _came back_.”

“Stress can cause a lot of things,” Boyle says diplomatically. “I know your—your grandfather’s passing was probably difficult—"

She barks a laugh. “Are you kidding? I want that bastard in the ground,” she says, and Rosa gets it. So what if it feels like ill-wishing to say it? There are some people, related or not, whose endings you see as the thin sun after a storm. “When he came back, he said he’d take the rest of us with him. My son—he’s only a baby,” the woman says, her face sober again. “I don’t want him…anywhere near this.”

“Totally,” Rosa says. “Do you, uh.” She glances at Boyle. “Do you know who might have wanted him back? Your grandfather, I mean.”

“No one with two brain cells to rub together to make a fire,” the woman spits, then continues in the same breath, “My uncle Donny.”

“You got an address?” Rosa says.

They make their way over to 16th, and finally she can’t stand it any longer. “What?” she says.

“You know as well as I do that they’re not coming back like that,” Boyle says. “With…a mission.” 

“What about your dead girlfriend, huh?” Rosa says, too sharp. He flinches, but he deserves it, for not seeing what’s in front of his own two eyes. “The one that had you up near the ceiling? She seemed to remember all her best recipes.”

“They’re echoes,” Boyle persists. “Gilbert’s been studying the phenomena for years, and that’s her theory." 

“Did you even talk to Jake about what happened at the bodega?” Rosa shoots back. It’s a low blow. “You’d believe _him_ , if you don’t believe me.”

She can see that even saying it is like chewing on glass, but he gets it out: “It was a stressful situation.”

“Never took you for a coward, Boyle,” she says, which is both untrue and unfair. Charles is shrinking, nervous, submissive, but he’s not a moron and he’s _not_ a coward. He’s just scared. Like they all are. They’re _cops_ , for god’s sake, and people hold grudges long enough on this side of the grave. If they have purpose—human purpose, not the kind of instinct that makes a cornered dog snap and a lost dog come home—well, a whole lot of New Yorkers are about to be in serious trouble. The squad included. 

“I love you too, Rosa,” Boyle says, and it stings just like he probably doesn’t mean it to. Boyle’s too good for any of them. But she doesn’t have time to apologize, because they’ve reached Donny’s building. 

“Hello?” Rosa says. “Donny Cantich? NYPD. We’re here about, uh…” She hesitates, but it doesn’t matter—there’s scuffling behind the door, and then an ominous, heavy silence.

“Mr. Cantich?” Boyle says, and then the door blows out on its hinges. 

Rosa feels Boyle’s soft “oof!” as she’s hurled back into him. They land in a tangle of arms and legs at the bottom of the stairs. Struggling up, Rosa squints at the doorway. Though she can barely see it through the cloud of dust and smoke, there’s—something lurching toward them. 

Beside her, Boyle says: “Fuck.” 

Rosa’s stomach drops. It’s not a ghost—not exactly. That right there is a corporeal, human body dragging itself toward them, scraggly beard matted with blood from the wide-open gash in his throat. It’s smeared down his front, too, and down his right arm, where the letter opener is still clutched in his meaty fist. 

It’s grisly. But Boyle’s not swearing at the carnage, Rosa guesses. He’s swearing at the neon-green glow limning the flaps of flesh at the corpse’s neck and shining from its mouth and eyes. Or, possibly at the fact that Donny Cantich is still moving toward them, not making a sound except for the shuffle of his feet and the gentle patter of his blood draining out of him onto the cement porch. 

“Donny?” Rosa says, motioning for Boyle to _be ready._

“ _WE WERE NEVER,”_ Donny says without moving his lips. His voice sounds like two cats on a piano in unison. “ _WE REMEMBER.”_

“Boyle. Gun,” Rosa says. Nothing happens. “Boyle. Gun?”

“What?” Boyle says. His hand is on his proton-gun, sure, but he doesn’t look close to pulling the trigger. “What do you remember?”

The thing swivels to stare at him, thunking down the steps one by one. They both back away, slow, Rosa glancing up and down the street just in case some tween on a bike decides now is the time to start bombing down toward the Duane Reade. The place is deserted, of course, because in addition to smelling like death warmed over (well—why wouldn’t it), the thing is sending a major sense of the heebs rolling over the block. She thinks she can hear a dog howling.

It stops again. Rosa starts to make out voices. At first, they’re so soft she can barely recognize them as much. Then, they get louder: a child shrieking, an old woman saying _Gracias, Gracias, Gracias_ , a panicked baritone shouting in a language that might be—Croatian? She realizes, with a start, that last one might be Donny himself. The voices grow, and grow, rising and falling in pitch, and it’s like one of those blurry pictures in a book for elementary schoolers that shifts when you least expect it into a boat or a flock of birds, because she hears it: _“EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING.”_  

“What do you want?” she screams into the din, because that’s all she can hear, this chorus of terrified people digging its way down into her soul. “Tell me what you want!”

_“EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING.”_

“Please!” Boyle says, his voice cracking. “Please.”

There is a silence. Rosa nearly falls from the weight of it.

Someone says, “I’m afraid.”

“Let me out! Let me out!”

“Jebem te bog. Jebem—“

“Help us.”

“I’ll kill you too, you fucking bitch.”

At that last, the body formerly known as Donny Cantich lunges. Boyle, _finally_ , shoots it right in the chest, but it barely falters from just one. After two, three, four, five shots more, it finally sinks to its knees and then falls forward, the blood in its neck pooling outward. The green light contracts, and Rosa sighs—but it explodes outward, streaking in every direction over the horizon and out of sight. It might be her imagination, but Rosa thinks she hears wailing.

Boyle sits, putting his head in his hands. His shoulders shudder. Rosa tries not to look at the thing in the street. She puts a hand on his back.

“I have to call Nikolaj,” he murmurs.

“Maybe you should, you know.” He looks up at her, eyes red-rimmed. Rosa feels wetness on her own face. “Get out of the city for a while?”

The look he gives her is pure betrayal. “Do you really think I would do that?” 

“No,” Rosa says, telling the truth. “But it was worth a shot.” She offers him a hand up.

They stand together for a second. Rosa, eventually, takes out her phone. “Sarge,” she says. “I think we need a body bag.” She looks back at Boyle, who’s frantically texting. “And an all-hands’ meeting.”

—  

“She’s not wrong,” Yates says. Rosa had done a double-take at seeing her seated in the meeting room; Holt had mentioned looping the GBs back in, of course, but she wasn’t positive they’d actually show. Well, not all of them _had_ —just Yates, sporting a neatly pressed cranberry suit and a pleasant, albeit slightly fixed, faint smile as the room slowly filled with jabbering officers, none of them seeming to recognize her without the goggles and the ectoplasm. 

Now, a handful of the rookies are openly gaping at her. She ignores them. “Sir,” she repeats. “What Officer Diaz is reporting is accurate. We’ve been trying to gather more data, but…” She exhales a little. “It appears that the ghosts aren’t creating havoc at random. They specifically possess intent.”

“What does that mean?” Holt says. Rosa, from her position at the podium, feels a little antsy caught between the two of them. 

“Well, for one thing, it suggests that the leakage from the various portals isn’t random either,” Yates says. “You may recall—“ 

“The Incident, yes,” Holt says. He studiously ignores the reactionary yips from some of the other officers. Rosa fights the urge to roll her eyes. Only a few of them had been involved with the partnership for a reason; the rest were either too skeptical or way, way too spooked by the idea of ghouls going bump in the night. 

“Yes,” Yates says. “In the Incident—you’ve been briefed, sir, but maybe not everyone else has?” She waits, but he just gestures: _go on_. “OK. Typically, the barriers between this world and the one where these creatures reside are quite uniform, but spots get weaker over time. Call it…spiritual erosion, maybe. A few spirits leak out here and there, but there are specialists trained in repair, and generally no great harm comes as a result. The ghosts themselves can cause damage—as we’ve seen—but they’re not truly conscious of the people they used to be. No memories, so no grudges.” 

“Like the smell of perfume after a woman leaves a room,” says Boyle.

Yates quirks an eyebrow at him. “Sure. In the Incident, one individual deliberately cracked the wall, believing that he could harness the spirits into doing his bidding. But no dice. They just stirred up trouble.”

“‘ _Just_ ,’” Sarge echoes. 

“Well, it could have been a lot worse.” Yates winces. “As we’re seeing now.”

“But this individual—didn’t he himself retain his old identity?” Holt says.

“Exactly,” Yates says. “Speaking candidly, sir, it’s baffled us for quite some time. We’d have liked to puzzle it out. But there’s not a lot of room for, y’know, academia when you’re….”

“BUSTING,” Peralta simply cannot keep himself from saying. But in the ensuing melee, something clicks into place in Rosa’s brain.

“He died,” Rosa says suddenly. “Didn’t he. I mean, they all do. But he died…knowing he’d come back.” 

Yates looks so, so sad. “Yes. Officer Diaz has it. We—we didn’t realize this was his plan. But he died on purpose, with the intention of triggering enough energy to allow him to return with the power of the spirit world behind him.” 

“But these aren’t all suicides,” Santiago says quietly. “They can’t be. And even if they were,” she pauses, clearly thinking back over the cases they’ve collaborated on. “I can’t imagine all these people doing so with the intention of acquiring spiritual energy. Or even knowing that was a possibility in the first place.”

“No, of course not,” Yates says. “We believe—well, actually, Patty’s the one who cracked it. So to speak. We believe Rowan was working in collaboration with someone on the other side— _this_ side, I should say—and that someone has continued his work.”

“Murders?” Santiago looks doubtful even as she says it.

“More like intentional sabotage,” Yates says. “This person—or, sheesh, people—appear to be gathering at the site of recent deaths and using whatever technology Rowan left behind to crack the barrier and bring them, and a whole lot of other spirits, back with them. Because the death is so recent, they, and their associates, often retain much more of their…well, spirit. But sometimes it all gets mixed in with worse stuff.”

“Demons,” Scully says.

Rosa watches Yates’ face remain aggressively neutral.

“Uh, well, more like emotions,” she finally says. “Strong feelings, usually of rage or fear.”

“What about Donny Cantich?” Boyle says. “He still had a body. And that body….was occupied.”

“Good question,” Yates says. Her mouth trembles slightly. “I’m—speaking frankly, officers, we’re concerned that copycats may be springing up who don’t know all the risks of this work on the barrier. In Cantich’s case, perhaps he was misinformed about his capacity to retain his consciousness after a self-sacrifice to summon a particular spirit. It seems as if certain extremely powerful rituals can allow the spirits to either occupy real-life flesh forms, or create their own.” She rubs at her jaw. “People may be posting tips just to stir up trouble, on…on the Instagram, or whatever, about how to harness death and summon ghosts.”

“Or just bring someone back you loved,” Rosa says. She thinks of the bodega and clenches her hands together, stands up. “How the _fuck_ do we stop that?”

“Rosa!” 

She won’t apologize. “If this shit is spreading, it’s too late. People…people are too desperate.”

“It’s true,” Yates says. “And, in the long term, it may mean a lot of things. Educational campaigns, wall reinforcements, some sort of ghostbuster recruitment system—“

“Recruitment system?” Peralta echoes, voice three octaves higher than normal. 

“But for now?” Somewhere, beneath all the adrenaline, Rosa registers how tired Yates looks. She passes a hand over her eyes, then straightens up again. “You guys ever do any gardening?”

A long pause.

“We, uh, live in Brooklyn, ma’am,” a timid junior officer ventures.

“Well, you know how to pull a weed!” she snaps. There is vigorous, even slightly panicked, nodding all around. “Find the root and you _yank it out_.” She meets Rosa’s eyes.

After a minute, Rosa nods. “It’s a start.”

“At this point, it’s all we have,” Yates says.

— 

Rosa has seen a lot of weird shit, the last six months notwithstanding. She’s not the memoir-writing type, but she knows for a fact Gina’s been asking Holt on a daily basis when she can finally cash in on a tell-all for her adoring fans. But having to give a press release about the death of a co-worker?

That’s just _upsetting_.

“’Jake Peralta was a fine colleague,’” Peralta reads aloud over the phone.

“You’re not supposed to call anyone,” Rosa reminds him. “Not Charles, not Amy—“

“But those are my friends and lovers, Rosa,” Peralta says. 

“Please don't say lover. It's upsetting."  
  
"We, on the other hand, are _colleagues_ ," Peralta pushes on. 

"I’d expect you to say the same about me,” Rosa says. “And, in fact, if you say anything else, I’ll, uh.”

The line crackles.

“Come back from the dead and haunt me?” Jake offers.

“Not if everything goes according to plan,” Rosa says. 

“Which it definitely will,” Jake says. “We’ve got busting on our side!” 

“Yeah.” 

“Yeah." 

“Jake?” Rosa says. “What DVDs do you have over at the safe house?”

“ _Point Break_ ,” Jake says. “And nothing else.”

“How many times have you watched it already?”

“I’m OK, Rosa,” Jake says, almost too gentle. “Really. It’s just the job. And how often do you get to Tom Sawyer your own funeral? This is like. The dream.”

“Mm. And how’s that paperwork Amy gave you to pass the time treating you?”

“The film rewards a rewatch,” Jake snaps.

“OK,” says Rosa. “So you don’t want me to find it on Amazon and watch it on the phone with you?" 

“Good lord,” Jake says. “I really, really do.”

The funeral is set for Saturday. Rosa’s not particularly jazzed for that part; it’s always a bummer to see parents cry, even if she knows it’s just temporary this time around. _Think of it as when we were in deep cover_ , Holt had said, and Rosa had thought, _Sure, but at least then we knew you were together._  

“What makes you think we’ll snag the boss, here?” Rosa had asked Yates a few nights prior, glancing at the grim, determined line of Peralta’s mouth.

“Couple things,” Yates had said. “It’s going to be a real public affair, you know, so I seriously doubt they’ll let anybody else get the glory.” 

“Noice,” Peralta said. Boyle had stopped wringing his hands long enough to land a single fist-bump.  

“Plus, Patty’s been all up on the hashtags,” Yates said, with the confidence of someone sounding out a book in a foreign language. “She says it’s some real Dark Web stuff, but from what she can tell, there’s a theory floating around that the power…accumulates.

“So…Jake kills ghost, Jake dies”—everyone, including Santiago herself, winced, but she continued—“Ghost gets Jake’s essence _and_ the ghost he killed? Like a matryoshka?”

"Technically,” Yates started, then sighed, shuffling the equipment arrayed on the table. “I mean, it’s poppycock. Nobody’s killing anyone, including Officer Peralta. But as far as we can tell, they’ll show up at the funeral to try to take advantage of Officer Peralta’s, well, lingering presence to try to use it for their own gain. Whether that’s opening a larger wormhole, or trying to—sorry, Officer Peralta—trying to reanimate him to their own devices, it’s hard to say. But we’re almost positive whoever’s in charge will use this as their big stunt, because the squad has been somewhat of a…public thorn in their side.”

Again with the fist-bumps.

“Do they have a point?” Santiago had persisted. “Does Jake—can any of us be considered more of a liability, if we’re taken?”

“I don’t know,” Yates had sighed. “I’m a scientist, Officer Santiago. None of this can be methodically proven or disproven. But there’d be no way to accumulate the power! These kids…" 

“Seems like it’s extra important to nip this in the bud now,” said Jeffords. “Before this becomes another, uh, Whale-Tail Challenge. _Don’t_ ask,” he cut Peralta off.

“Right,” Peralta said. Rosa had looked up from her own pile of ammunition to catch the end of the expression on Santiago’s face. She’d jerked her head back down, face burning, guilty. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

Rosa’s still thinking of this—Jake’s “I’m ready,” Charles’ trembling lower lip, Amy’s steady, fearless pride—when she puts on her dress uniform over her flak jacket Saturday morning. The sky’s a bright, clear blue, the kind of weather Jake would have loved at his funeral. Did love? Her hands shake as she pours herself a glass of water, and she rolls her eyes at herself in the mirror. Her hair’s a fucking mess. 

Finally, she texts Holtzmann. 

 _Hey_. _I want to do a last munition checklist._

30 seconds later: _Yes. My recommendation: Two ghost guns. An ectoplasmic stun-gun. Proton pistols, obviously. Three to five containment canisters. The standard knapsack, plus one hose attachment. Goggles. One permawave cannon, if you have it._

Rosa’s mouth twitches. _I do not._

_Pity. Large butterfly net?_

_All out._

_Rubber gloves?_

_Check._

_Oh yes. I should have remembered._

Rosa’s cheeks heat, and she rolls her eyes again. _I have the kitchen-cleaning variety too._

She can _feel_ Holtzmann smirking. _Yes, that’s what I meant._  

Her hand tightens. She takes a deep breath. _Good luck out there._

 _You too, Diaz._  

“Well,” she says. Her voice echoes. Her kitchen really is spotless, everything in its place, quiet as Brooklyn ever gets. “Let’s go save New York. Again.” 

And that’s when her front door implodes.

—

For the first minute, all she registers is _Ouch_. Then she hears the whispers.

“He said nobody was going to be home!”

“Let’s grab the guns and get out of here. Just stick to the job.”

“What, and let her come right after us? I don’t want a fucking cop on my tail.”

“So you’d rather have her in our backseat?”

Rosa does a careful inventory, starting at her toes. Ankles: tied. Legs: intact. Torso: bruised but not bleeding, as far as she can tell from her position on the floor. Right arm: fine. Left arm (she moves slightly and has to bite down a scream): possible fracture. Hands: tied. (Well, _that’s_ going to be a bitch to get out of.) Head: aching but not concussed (she thinks). She’s still on her kitchen floor—amid the stink of sulphur from whatever they’d used to bust the locks, she can still smell the coffee from the mug she’d left half-full in the sink. _Not so spotless anymore_.

Opening her eyes a fraction, she can see two figures across the room, standing over the pile of equipment she’d started putting on. They’d obviously patted her down; both her service pistol and her proton gun aren’t in their holsters. But they’d missed the knife she keeps in the sheath at her ankle, like typical fucking goons.

Slowly, slowly, she curls into a tighter ball. The pain in her elbow is white-hot, the bright line making it hard to think. The dudes at her kitchen island don’t seem to notice. They’ve started quietly packing things into a bag, apparently having deferred the question of whether to take her with them for after they pack up her stuff. 

Her hand closes on the handle. No one is taking her anywhere. 

With her feet free, she can slam her legs together around the ankles of the nearest man and send him toppling. He hits the ground hard—not for long, she bets, but long enough to use his torso as a vault to launch herself at the other. He scrabbles for his own gun, but she’s faster. All these idiots put up a single spread at the range and think they’re Ellen Ripley. By the time he gets it out, she’s got his neck in the crook of her elbow, hands still tied together. 

“Who. Sent. You,” she grits out.

“Bitch,” he spits. Dude on the floor moans—she’s willing to bet he’s never had a cracked rib before.

She squeezes, and he chokes. “I’m not going to ask twice,” she says. 

“Fine! Fine.” She releases, ever so slightly. “Alistair’s the guy you want,” he manages. “He said you’d try to stop us.”

“He was right,” she says, and squeezes again until he sags in her arms. She leans him up against the counter until she can get her arms untangled, then lets him drop just in time to knock the other guy back to the floor. She takes a long, deep breath, then swings her arms down as hard as she can on either side of her, snapping the zip ties at her wrists. It feels good to be able to scream. 

After she gets their hands tied together—she has zip ties of her own, and she’s not going to let them reach their ankles—she takes a minute. Now that the adrenaline is wearing off, her head is starting to get a little swimmy. She shakes it and swallows down nausea. Maybe not so not-concussed after all.

She makes a call.

“Hey,” she says. “I think…I think we have a problem.”

—

Rosa’s phone is buzzing again by the time she clambers into the back of the hearse. Holtzmann, riding shotgun with Tolan at the wheel, turns around to look at her over the truly massive weapon she’s cradling in her lap like a baby.

“Erin and Patty have triangulated the signal of the energy flare-ups taking place around town,” she says without preamble. “Apart from the standard exorcisms and Ouija board mishaps, there appears to be a rising surge out east, near Bergen Beach.” She pauses and squints. “Did you dislocate your arm?” 

“I’m pretty sure it’s a fracture,” Rosa says. “What the hell is in Bergen Beach?”

“We’re about to find out,” says Holtzmann. “Gilbert, switch with me.” Without warning, she clambers over the center divider, making Tolan yelp in alarm. She carefully wedges her cannon into the converted backseat, then scrambles after it.

“Hi,” she says, once she finally gets there. Across the car, Yates and Gilbert are wearing matching “OK, what the fuck” faces. “Can I see?” 

Every part of Rosa is tense, but she offers her arm anyway. Holtzmann’s hands are so, so gentle, like she’s holding a kitten or a Sig Sauer P320 converted to shoot sulfur bullets. She rummages in her pack and produces a length of rubber tubing and—Rosa counts—six bandanas. 

“Wilderness first aid,” she says, as if that clarifies anything. “Hold still, please.”

Rosa’s nerves are jangling with pain and anxiety, but she does, breathing through her nose. Holtzmann tries her best not to jostle her, but they are in a car, and when Rosa hisses through her teeth she lays one cool hand on her other arm in apology. “Nearly there.”

“I’m fine,” Rosa says. 

“Yes.” Holtzmann carefully ties off the last knot, then looks up into Rosa’s face. “That should hold you for at least a little while.”

“Thanks.”

“Shouldn’t she at least, I don’t know, go to a hospital?” Gilbert suggests.

“No,” they say simultaneously. “Well, eventually,” Holtzmann adds.

“First we have to kick some nerd butt,” Rosa says, twisting to finally answer her phone. “Amy,” she says. “Did you get my message? Is Jake with you?” 

There’s a long, horrible silence. “I was calling to see if he was with you.”

Rosa had suspected as much, but it still makes her stomach plummet to hear it out loud. “Some goons busted into my apartment,” she says. “The Ghostbusters think the Big Bad’s in Bergen Beach—we’re heading there now.”

“Text me the address,” Amy says, and hangs up.

The building, when they slowly drive past it, is nondescript—one of the dozens of warehouses left in this part of town to rot or get converted into overpriced art galleries. There are no cars outside (clearly Alistair, whoever he is, has a handful more brain cells to rub together than his cronies), but one of the rolltop garage doors looks less grimy, somehow, than the others, and the gravel in front of it is scattered with more vigor, like someone put up a fight. Around the corner, Rosa spots a Plymouth that looks like it’s held together with duct tape and a prayer. 

“You brought Jake’s car?” she says as she climbs out of the hearse. 

“We traded for the weekend!” Amy’s mouth twists. “I thought…he’d be less…conspicuous.”

“I don’t think ‘conspicuous’ had anything to do with it,” says Terry, unfolding himself from the passenger seat. “Someone knew exactly where we were going to be.” 

Boyle looks askance at the officer who’d been crammed into the backseat with him, a short woman Rosa vaguely recognizes as Officer….Ng? She rolls her eyes back at him. “Peralta owes me $50, no way I’m giving him up to some ghost dork,” she says. “You asked _me_ to help _you,_ remember?”

“No one is above questioning,” Boyle hisses, but his ears turn faintly pink. 

“Hey,” says Santiago softly, stepping to Rosa’s side. She freezes. “Are you gonna be OK?”

“I should be asking you the same question,” Rosa points out.

“I’m not the one who looks like a Girl Scout camp reject,” Amy shoots back. Rosa looks at her blankly. “I don’t know, where else do they wear bandanas?”

“I’ll be careful, Amy,” Rosa says. “We’ll go in here, rescue your boy, and I’ll go straight to the hospital from there.”

“I’m only saying yes because I know there’s nothing I can do to stop you,” Amy says. Rosa pats her with her good hand. 

“Attagirl.” 

“OK, folks, come on in,” Terry says. “Ghostbusters, we know for a fact that’s where the Big Guy is?”

“Alistair,” Rosa says, then shrugs when everybody pivots to her. “I got _some_ info out of the idiots who tried to go after me.” 

“And you didn’t think to mention this earlier?” Gilbert demands. “We could have tangled with him before!”

“Have you?”

Long pause. “It’s not familiar,” Gilbert says. “Although—Alistair is not exactly an uncommon name in this line of work.”

“They’re not the most creative types,” Tolan says. 

“Clearly,” Terry says. “But you’ve located the…signal, or whatever?” 

“It’s more of a triangulation of energy frequency flare-ups,” Tolan says. “But, uh…yes.”

“Plus Jake has find-my-friends turned on,” Boyle offers. “Unless they stole his phone, there’s a….” He checks his own screen. “95 percent chance he’s in there. Or, uh, in the bay.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?” asks Amy. “Like, when they kidnapped him?” 

“I don’t check it every _minute_ ,” Boyle says. “That would be a violation of Jake’s privacy. And also he asked me to stop because it was draining his battery and I could see when he was at your apartment.”

“This is all good and horrifying,” Yates breaks in. “But these readouts are getting awfully noisy, and I have a hunch that Officer Peralta is about to be in some seriously uncomfortable circumstances.” 

“Right,” says Terry. “9-9? Here’s the plan. We fan out, Santiago and I in front, then Officer Nguyen and Boyle, then Diaz and the Ghostbusters in the rear.”

“But,” Rosa starts, then sighs. “Right. Injured reserve.” 

“You’re lucky I’m letting you go at all,” Terry says. “But I’d rather you take out that rage on someone who has it coming.” 

“Good instinct, Sarge,” Rosa says. She hoists her proton-pistol. “Let’s go make these fools wish they’d never been born a second time.”

— 

It’s infuriating to be stuck behind everyone else—to watch Sarge and Amy wrench the rolltop open, Boyle and Ng close on their heels, and only be able to hear shouting and crashing after that. No gunshots, though. Rosa has a split second of time to be reassured before there’s a sickening crack, and the world tilts sideways a little. Rosa staggers backward into Holtzmann.

“Sorry,” she manages. Holtzmann is reassuringly solid. In front of her, Boyle and Ng are scrambling back up. “What was that?”

“We’re about to find out,” says Holtzmann, her profile lit by the neon green now spilling out from the rolltop. “I’d say at this point it’s all hands on deck, champ.”

“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Rosa says. She surges forward.

The first thing she sees is the machine. It looks like a cross between a boiler and an industrial deep fryer. It’s gurgling and hissing, every so often letting off rolling clouds of death-scented stink. Surrounding it are steel boxes, some with radioactive green residue, some caked in dirt, some with rusty stains matching the ones around encrusted the big one’s mouth.

She doesn’t see Jake. 

A man charges her. She feels almost light with relief. Her skin hums: Here is the person who hurt my friend, here is the crack of my pistol into his skull, here he is on the floor. Next. This is how Rosa makes herself useful. Move forward, spin-kick another goon going for Tolan, don’t even watch him fall. Next. She swings to one knee and shoulder-slams someone else, barely even feeling the spike of pain it radiates down her bad arm. Someone is screaming. Someone is screaming her name. Her ears feel hot. She wants to sink her teeth into the flesh of the world and tear it off in chunks.

“Help!” Someone finally gets through. She turns, barely registering the groans of the man she just kneecapped. “We need backup!”

She finally sees them, behind the machine. Jake is sagged in a chair, half-untied, Amy crouched at his side. His head lolls, eyes fluttering. Above them stands a man in a black robe, clutching a book in one hand. Rosa only sees the knife. 

She is there, between the knife and her friends. Her hand is on his wrist, digging into his tendons, forcing him back a step. Rosa looks down into his face. He looks like any other white guy, and his eyes have nothing but flat death behind them.

“Back the fuck off,” she snarls.

He blinks, smiles, almost dreamy. “Officer Diaz,” he says. “You’ll do fine instead.” He lunges. 

“No!” Amy screams from behind her. Rosa waits for the bite.

None comes. Instead, the man—Alistair, she can only assume, although he looks more like a Bill or a Steve—goes taut, his muscles locking. The knife quivers faintly in his hand. His mouth works. His eyes, dead before, are lit from within, a faint, sickly green.

“ _I REQUIRE A VESSEL_ ,” he says. Or doesn’t say. Rosa is reminded of Donny Cantich, puppeted by furious ghosts. _“NOW.”_  

Alistair jerks back into motion, but Rosa’s ready for him this time. She steps backward and sideways as he goes for her, a hand still gripping his wrist. “None of us are going to be your vessel, you sick fuck,” she mutters, trying to get the knife away from him, but it’s like wrestling a cat into a carrier. He’s all coiled steel, and her adrenaline is rapidly depleting. He slashes wildly, and pain slices through her upper thigh. She shoves him away instinctively, and now Amy is up and on him, stun gun buried in his neck. He falls to the ground, shrieking, and Amy turns back toward Jake at once. 

“Is he,” Rosa says. She can’t get the word out. Closer, she can see two neat slashes in Jake’s limp hands, one in each palm.

“He’s breathing,” Amy says. “I don’t know why…Jake?” Her voice catches, and she swallows. “Babe?”

“Hey,” Rosa says, looming over Alistair’s twitching form. “What the fuck did you do to him?” 

“Too late,” the man chokes. He makes a noise. Rosa is startled to realize it’s a laugh. “He unlocked the door for us, sweet—sweet boy.”

Rosa kicks him in the ribs. “Tell us how to get him back,  _now_.”

She realizes her mistake immediately. He grabs hold of her foot—which he shouldn’t _be able to_ , Jesus, whatever’s inside him is stronger than the stun gun—and uses her to yank himself toward the knife. Before she can move to stop him, he seizes it and slashes his own throat, the bright line across his neck a match for the cuts in Jake’s palms.

For two seconds, the quiet is normal. Rosa can hear Terry’s grunts as he pulls a length of pipe out of the hands of a guy half his size, Officer Ng’s matter-of-fact voice telling someone else they’re under arrest. But when she looks up, all four Ghostbusters look horrified. 

Then the sound is sucked out of the room. The silence is thick and soft as new snow, and just as deadly. When Rosa opens her mouth to yell, it makes its way down her throat, her lungs flattening. Just when she’s certain she’ll pass out or die like this, air rushes back in, the room filling with the sound of screaming. 

It’s not just from the living. Whatever’s inside that machine wants out. And Alistair is already moving.

Rosa scrambles after him, slipping in the blood that had spurted from his neck. But she’s too late, just like he’d said. He flings the boiler door open. Behind it is a translucent wall of slime, shiny as an oil spill. He opens the book and croaks a single word: “ _HUC.”_

“Shit!” Rosa hears Tolan yell above the din. The screaming from the portal has dropped in pitch, like a mangled record. It yawns its way into a roar. In the portal, she sees a thousand gaping mouths merging, stretching wider, growing teeth.

Rosa has spent her whole adult life honing her reflexes, training her body to act before she thinks. It’s the only thing that saves her as the monster in the portal rips its way free, exploding the boiler into pieces. Rosa rolls before she thinks to protect her busted arm, but she’s better off than Alistair. The last thing she sees of him is his head turned 120 degrees, a look of mild surprise on his face, before the thing bends down to tear him in half.

She gapes. One minute, it looks whole, its five heads little more than mouths with concentric rows of teeth on muscular necks, all coming together on a hulking lizard body. The next, it looks composed of a mass of writhing spirits, flickering in and out, none distinct but all individual.

“Shoot it!” Holtzmann screams, and Rosa jerks her proton pistol up. It snarls as the electricity zaps it, bringing a clawed foot to scratch at the base where its necks come together like it’s trying to dislodge a fly. One of the goons next to her raises a gun with shaky hands.

“No!” Rosa yells at him, but he fires off a round anyway. To her surprise, the bullets land, and the thing shifts backward. It’s only put off for a second, though—it lunges for the man and snaps off his arm. He barely has time to scream before another one of its heads swallows him whole. Rosa swears she sees his shape join the legion making up its belly, and she shudders. 

“Oh, this is bad,” Boyle says. “This is bad.” The thing makes a guttural retching sound, as if in agreement, and starts toward him—no. Rosa sees the door open behind him, the clear, blue, New York October sky a clarion call to freedom for any flying beast. As if reading her mind, the creature unfolds a jagged set of wings.

“Close the door!” she screams, but Terry is already there, muscles straining as he yanks it down. The thing shrieks, moving faster. “Terry!”

Ng leaps up to join him once she can reach, both of them practically hanging on the door. It slams just in time—or nearly. Where one of the monster’s head had been is now a stump, gushing neon-green ooze as it whips around wildly. Rosa hopes that no local Bergen Beachers are out walking their dogs, or they’re going to have a nasty surprise of the giant lamprey-head variety. The other four heads rear back, but Terry and Ng are long gone, running back toward the machine. They pass Tolan, who drops to one knee and fires what looks like an enormous net, spreading as it goes. It snags the creature, who screams, thrashing. 

“That won’t keep it for long,” she says, jogging back to where the group is gathering. Amy, hand still gripping Jake’s shoulder, looks up. “We need a plan, now.”

“It doesn’t like bullets,” Rosa says. “But I don’t think any of our weapons are powerful enough.”

“Told you to bring a cannon,” Holtzmann says. “That would at least slow it down.” 

Rather than acknowledge Boyle’s questioning look, Rosa stalks over to one of the downed goons. “Hey,” she says, nudging him none-too-gently with the toe of her boot. “What the fuck did you guys think you were gonna do?”

He moans, curling into a ball. She nudges harder. “ _Now_ ,” she says. “Or should I see if it’s still hungry?”

“Alistair said he could control it!” he cries. “Rowan—Rowan promised him that if he just did the ritual, the portal would open, and—“

“How many fucking people were you going to kill to do it?” Rosa says, her voice low. “Or did you not give a shit?” 

“He said I could bring my sister back!” the guy wails, face somewhere between his elbows. Rosa blanches.

“Nobody’s coming back,” she says. The room is too quiet behind her. She turns. Holtzmann is the only one who will meet her eyes. 

“We have to try to close the portal,” Gilbert says, swiping a hand over her forehead. She leaves a trail of goo. “But last time we did that…” 

“It nearly took us with it,” Yates says. “And, also, we needed a nuclear reactor. Which I don’t suppose any of you have lying around.” 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Rosa snaps. She swallows hard. “If all it took to open the portal was blood, shouldn’t that close it?” 

“It’s not that simple,” Gilbert starts, but Holtzmann holds a hand up, looking thoughtful.

“If we were able to expand our existing field exorcism tech,” she starts, appearing unconcerned with the growing racket behind her, “We could contain Señor Growly in his own aquarium.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Sarge says.

“Like a flame in a jar,” Amy says. “No energy, no oxygen…”

“It starves,” Holtzmann says. Her face is electric. “I need to get to the car.” On cue, there is a tremendous ripping sound, followed by a four-part minor-key roar. The creature’s heads are free. 

“We’ll take care of that,” Ng says. “Or at least…”

“We can keep it busy,” Rosa says. “Amy. Can you get Jake out of here?” Amy looks mutinous, but nods, hoisting Jake over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry toward a door at the back of the warehouse. She staggers a bit, but continues. Rosa tries not to look at the way Jake’s head flops to one side, his face so pale she can see the blue veins under his chin. Holtzmann and Gilbert follow, guns raised to give her cover.

“OK, team,” Sarge says. “If it can’t catch us, it can’t kill us.”

“Theoretically,” says Boyle.

“Optimism, Charles!” says Ng.

“Right,” says Terry, grimacing. “Rosa, you take the back door. Boyle, 3’o’clock. Ng, get to 9. I’ll take the front. When it comes close to one of us, someone else distract it. Yates, Tolan, can you try to keep it in one spot as long as possible?” 

“We can try,” Yates says. Tolan nods. 

“Great,” Terry says. “And, uh…try not to kill each other. Or get killed.”

“Because we definitely aren’t bringing you back,” says Rosa. No one laughs.

They haven’t even made it to their stations before the creature wriggles the rest of the way out, shaking off the net like a wet dog. It starts for Ng, who crouches low and shoots it in the shoulder. Terry gets it in the back of one head, and it rears back, seeming more confused than hurt. Before it makes it all the way turned around, Rosa creeps forward and aims for its chest. It shrieks. 

“It’s working!” Boyle says as it spins in a circle, screaming. “It can’t go for all of us!”

It whirls on him and charges. “Shit,” Rosa hisses, shooting off a round from her proton pistol. It ignores the first zap, then the second one. The third one finally draws its attention and it turns again, this time facing her head on. She runs backward as it advances. All four of its heads are coming toward her. She hears yelling, more shots fired, but it’s tired of games. It wants blood. She raises her gun and— _click_. Nothing.

“Fuck,” she breathes. She knows she has a spare proton pistol in her other holster, but it’s beneath her bad arm. Her service revolver is at her back. The only thing within reach is—her boot knife. She has a split-second flash of hilarity, thinking about how this must look: human versus ghost-monster, St. George facing down the dragon with the world’s tiniest sword. This can’t be the worst way to die, but it’s certainly going to be embarrassing. 

The thing lunges toward her and then stops short, caterwauling. A bright, crackling line has wrapped around all four of its legs, drawing it up short. Rosa sees Tolan and Yates holding each end of the snare, muscles straining. She inhales hugely and grabs her service revolver from the small of her back, shooting it in the dead center of all those rows of teeth. To her surprise, it explodes into pieces. 

“Oh, shit!” Terry says. “Try to get the other ones!” But it pulls its heads out of the way, trying instead to reach toward Tolan and Yates.

“We can’t hold it much longer!” Yates hollers. “Where the _heck_ is Holtzmann?”

“Here! Sorry! Here!” Holtzmann says, slamming back through the door. Her arms are full of what look like squat scuba-diving canisters, with cables curling out from underneath them. “Five more minutes!”

“We can give you two,” Tolan yells. The thing thrashes. Ng, sticking to one wall, edges closer, revolver following the line of one head.

“Watch it,” Terry warns, and she tilts a smile at him.

“I was first in my class in marksmanship,” she says, and another head jerks sideways with the force of her bullet. It keens. Out of the corner of her eye, Rosa sees Holtzmann stand up from where she’s been crouched and take off running, vaulting over the spitting lines of electricity to slam down another one of the tanks in the opposite corner. “Two down!” she yells, and the thing wrenches one leg out of the snare to swipe at her. She grunts, rolling sideways, and Boyle dashes in front of her. The thing tries to slash him instead, but he stays out of range. 

“Take that, monster!” he says, and of course that’s when he trips over one of the guys on the ground.

The beast roars in triumph and brings its claws down toward Boyle, who cowers. Rosa is too far away. Everyone is too far away, and this is what she’s going to have to tell Nikolaj. 

“Get the fuck away from him!” a voice hollers. Amy’s back, and she’s got an axe. She barely pauses to raise it above her head with two hands before she hurls, the axe spinning end over blade to embed itself in the monster’s chest. It shrieks and sits back on its haunches to scrabble at it with its free claw. Boyle scrambles back up, shooting as he goes. 

“Where did you get an axe?” Rosa yells.

“Jake had one in his car,” Amy says back. Her smile looks watery. “In case of emergencies, I guess.”

“This counts!” Terry yells.

Holtzmann slams the third tank down and runs back toward them. “This is gonna be tricky,” she says, voice as calm as if she’s explaining how to tie a figure-eight knot. “None of us can be in the zone when I set it off, unless you want to have your life energy slowly sublimated into the vacuum?” She actually pauses like she’s giving time for anyone to respond, then continues. “On the other hand, the minute we let go of Mr. Grumbles, he’s gonna come after us. So, uh…who’s fast?” 

“Me,” say Rosa, Amy, Boyle, and Ng in unison. They all frown at each other. 

“Cardio is not Terry’s strong suit,” says Terry. 

“The Boyle clan is very slippery,” says Boyle. “We’re like otters, but only three-quarters in the sex way.”

Holtzmann instinctively moves on. “There’s also the question of the idiots who set it free in the first place. Do we care about their energy being sucked dry?”

“Yes,” says Rosa. Unfortunately. 

“OK,” says Terry. “Amy, Ng, Tolan, Gilbert, Yates, and I will grab these guys. Don’t look at me like that, Santiago, I saw you carry Peralta out of here. Rosa, are you OK to hang on to the net if Boyle’s there on the other side?” 

“Roger,” says Rosa. Boyle nods.

“Then go!” Terry says. “That thing isn’t going to stay axed!”

Indeed, pretty much as soon as Rosa and Boyle take over, the thing decides it’s gotten used to the blade sticking out of its chest. It lashes its tail at Tolan, who’s dragging one of the guys toward the garage door. She swears but doesn’t let go; the tail misses the guy’s feet by inches. Screaming in frustration, it suddenly goes still. 

“Holtzmann?” Rosa says. “This can’t be good.”

“Thirty more seconds!” Holtzmann says, fiddling madly with the last tank. Beside her, Amy and Ng have a guy slung between them, and Terry’s got one collared in each hand. The last guy, hands up in the air, is meekly walking in front of Yates, proton pistol pressed to the back of his neck.

The thing’s flesh ripples. Its back strains. And then, Rosa isn’t pulling _out_ so much as trying to stay _down_. The thing’s got both wings through the hole it tore in the net, and it’s flapping hard.

“Holtzmann!” Gilbert cries. “We have liftoff!” 

Holtzmann looks up. Rosa sees her mouth _Oh, fuck_ , then whip her head back down. “Ten seconds!” she says. “Team! Get ready to let go!” 

“Getting ready is not the issue!” Boyle yells. Rosa leans her entire body backward. One of her feet is starting to come off the floor. “Holtzmann!” 

“Now!” Holtzmann screams. “Now, now, get over here, _now_!”

Boyle lets go a split-second before Rosa, which means she hits the ground harder than she means to. For a single, horrible moment, her ass is on the ground and the beast is whipping to face her in the air. Then Gilbert is yanking her up by the arm—she screams—and they’re both off, Boyle in front of them, sprinting toward the door with the creature’s gnarly, grave-scented death breath hot on the backs of their necks. Rosa swears she can hear the grinding of one of its rows of teeth. She ducks and rolls, hits the far wall, and watches upside down as a neon-green window slams itself between the monster and the rest of them. The monster crashes into it, hard, and bellows. 

Sitting up straight, Rosa can see it’s not a windowpane but a dome, with the beast spinning in a circle in the center. There is a tiny plinking sound, and the flash of a grenade lights the underside, filling the room with sound. The bubble seems to bulge, then sucks in on itself into the portal, carrying the noise and the color with it. The door to the boiler slams shut; it falls sideways. 

There is a long quiet. 

“Grenade?” Tolan says, in a tone that suggests she knows the answer. 

“Can’t be too careful,” says Holtzmann.

The door opening makes everyone jump. Half the group draws their guns; the other half already has them out. Jake, blinking blearily at all of them, grips the frame with both hands. Amy lets out a single sob. “What’s—“ he starts, but she tackles him back out of the room, Boyle close on her heels. 

“Amy?” Rosa hears him ask as she shakily pulls herself up. “Is that…is that my axe?”

—

Rosa doesn’t particularly _want_ to go to the hospital, but it’s better than being on the “JK, nobody’s dead except people who should stay dead!” hasty press tour they’d had to whip up when it become increasingly apparent that Peralta had ditched his own funeral. It takes hours to convince the attending physician that staying overnight for observation will mostly mean the doctors observing her getting angrier and angrier. To pass the time, she digs up the video of Holt calmly telling reporters that sometimes, in extreme cases, the NYPD is forced to pretend one of their own officers has met his untimely end. _Jake_ hadn’t had to stay at the hospital, stitches and all. 

By the time she toddles out of the waiting room at New York Presbyterian, night has fallen over Brooklyn. She sighs, drawing her coat around herself, and jerks for her gun when the figure unfolds itself from the shadows beside a truly sad planter. Holtzmann comes into the light spilling from the glass doors.

“Hey,” she says. “Santiago asked me to make sure you got home safe. She would have come herself, but…shenanigans.”

“Yeah, I heard they found one of the rookies’ forum posts,” says Rosa. "Guess we found our leak."

“Bummer,” Holtzmann says.  
  
“Yeah, it is.” Rosa takes a breath and lets herself lean into it a little. “I don’t need an escort.”

“Yeah, maybe I do,” Holtzmann says, one side of her smile tugging up the corner of her mouth. “Aren’t you going to offer me your arm?” 

Rosa doesn’t smile, but she does thunk her cast into Holtzmann’s side. Holtzmann feints left, wheezing exaggeratedly. “I’ll have you know I’m a municipal hero, Officer Diaz!” 

“Rosa,” she says. “Please.”

“Sorry,” Holtzmann says. “Rosa.”

“ _You_ don’t have anything to be sorry for,” Rosa says.

“A few things, maybe,” Holtzmann says.

“No,” Rosa says, with more force than she means. They walk in silence for a few minutes, then she says, “I don’t actually live that far away.”

“I know,” Holtzmann says. Duh, of course she does. “Maybe I wanted to walk you there anyway.”

“Maybe I want to invite you up,” Rosa says, a little too fast to be brave.

“Maybe I want to say yes,” Holtzmann says.

“Maybe I want you to,” Rosa says.

“So?” Holtzmann says.

Rosa slows her to a stop before she thinks too hard about it. (Reflexes, training, letting the body take the lead.) The night is clear, with that autumn crisp uncurling around them. Rosa can maybe even see a star. “I’m not doing this because I’m like…grateful, or whatever,” she says. “Although I am. Grateful. You saved our asses.”

“You could have handled it,” Holtzmann says. Rosa almost believes her. “But we all make a pretty good team.”

“Yeah,” Rosa says. “We do.”

Holtzmann cocks her head, eyes bright as a crow’s. “Are you doing this because you’re scared?”

“No,” Rosa says. She thinks about Amy tackling Jake, Terry and Ng trying to pull the door down together, the desperate, resigned look in Boyle’s eyes. “Well. Maybe a little. But not of, like. The undead. ” 

“ _I_ ain’t afraid of no ghost,” Holtzmann says, and Rosa kisses her so she doesn’t give her the satisfaction of laughing. 

They get all the way to Rosa’s floor, feet tripping over each other, hands tangled in each other’s shirt hems, before Rosa realizes that she doesn’t exactly have a working lock anymore. They stare at the front door, sagging off its hinges. Someone—an officer called to the scene who’s smart enough not to have stuck around—has half-heartedly stretched police tape across the frame. When Rosa peeks in, nothing looks out of place beyond some rusty-looking stains on the kitchen floor. 

“After you,” Holtzmann says, and Rosa delicately steps around the police tape. Holtzmann, gallant as ever, scoots one of her recliners in front of the door. “That’s a problem for future Rosa,” she says. “Shall we?”

Rosa is already trying to unbutton her shirt one-handed. Holtzmann smiles at her and reaches over to finish the job, easing it off her shoulders. “Oh hello, darling,” she says 

Rosa notes her eyeline. “Are you talking to me or my tits?” 

“I said darling, not dar _lings_ ,” Holtzmann says. “Clearly I was talking to Lefty.” 

“Aw, is that your favorite?” Rosa slips a hand into her bra, gives it a squeeze, enjoys watching Holtzmann’s eyes darken. “I’m kinda partial to the other, myself.” 

“You know, I think I need a refresher,” says Holtzmann, batting Rosa’s hand away. Rosa feels it peak and harden under Holtzmann’s thumb, even though she’s touching her so, so lightly. Holtzmann moves to the other one, trailing her fingers over the top where it swells and moving down. Rosa stays still, fighting the urge to clasp her hands behind her back and stand ready for inspection. She’s already starting to squeeze her thighs together, trying to get some pressure on her clit. 

“Are you,” she says. “Are you going easy on me?”

Holtzmann flicks a glance up, amused. “Well, you did break your arm this morning.”

“It’s a fracture,” Rosa says. “And they gave me the strong ibuprofen.” 

“Uh-huh,” Holtzmann says. She steps closer, smoothing the hair back from Rosa’s forehead. “What if I told you,” she breathes into Rosa’s ear, “That I wanted to take my time with you.”

“Um,” Rosa says. “Could I still tell you to hurry?”

“You could.”

“Hurry,” Rosa says. “Please.”

“No, thank you,” Holtzmann says. “Shall we?” Hand still in Rosa’s hair, she walks them slowly backward until the backs of Rosa’s knees hit her bed. Rosa sends up a quick thank-you to whomever’s listening that she’d managed to get all her dirty leggings into the laundry hamper the night before, and then Holtzmann’s cupping her head and easing her down. She kisses Rosa’s neck, still so lightly Rosa can barely feel it, mouth warm and wet on her collarbone, between her breasts. Slipping one strap of Rosa’s bra down her arm, then the other, she mouths at Rosa’s right nipple, sucking it until Rosa gasps, then nipping.

“I thought you were—going easy,” Rosa says. 

“Who says I’m not?” Holtzmann murmurs against her. She makes her way down Rosa’s sternum, more tongue than lips now. Rosa’s legs tense, and Holtzmann’s hands press down on her quads, soothing her even as she works her up, and up. She rests her chin on the pooch above Rosa’s waistband below her belly button. “Can I take these off?”

“Obviously,” Rosa says, reaching down to help. Holtzmann grips her good wrist with one hand—a warning—and goes to work on them herself. “Up, please.”

The rasp of Holtzmann’s clothes against Rosa’s bare skin is making her crazy with it. She’s comfortable with herself, but something about being completely naked next to fully-dressed Holtzmann is extra obscene. She feels exposed, like a painting on display that anyone can smudge their fingers against. She’s already banged up. She wants Holtzmann to leave another mark. 

“Jillian,” she says. “C’mon. _Fuck_ me.”

“I’m working on it,” Holtzmann says. She drags her fingers through the thatch of Rosa’s pubic hair to circle her clit. It’s not enough. 

“Holtzmann,” says Rosa.

“Mm?” Still circling, a little more firmly. Rosa tilts her hips up, making a needy noise in the back of her throat.

“I—harder, please,” she says.

“I told you, I’m being gentle,” Holtzmann says. A grin steals over her face, just for a second. “Do you want me to stop?” 

“Yes,” Rosa says. “No. Don’t _stop,_ just stop— _“_

"Seems like you need to get your priorities straight before you start giving orders,” Holtzmann says, rubbing just a little bit faster. Lucky for her, too, because Rosa’s wound tightly and Holtzmann's right in kicking range. “Don’t you think?”

“S’good,” Rosa says, and of course that’s when Holtzmann stops circling and presses directly on her clit with two fingers. Rosa yips in surprise, feeling her clit jerk around Holtzmann’s touch, desperate to keep the movement going. “Holtzmann, fuck, what the fuck!”

Holtzmann doesn’t pay any attention, letting her ring finger and pinky curl down toward Rosa’s wet cunt. She squeezes, grateful to have something to take the edge off this yawning ache threatening to swallow her whole, and Holtzmann smiles. She takes her other two fingers off her clit—Rosa whimpers—and lays her palm flat against Rosa, letting her rock back and forth in her own slick until Rosa is desperate, a marionette with her strings stretched to snapping, Holtzmann holding them all in her one hand. Holtzmann stops again.

“Ask nicely,” she says.

“Please,” Rosa says, curling her fingers in the sheets. Her hips twitch up minutely; Holtzmann holds her down with the other hand.

“Please, what?” Holtzmann leans down, giving her a soft, long kiss that ends in a bite to her lower lip. “What do you want me to do, Rosa?”

“Please let me come,” Rosa says, so quiet she can barely even hear herself, but Holtzmann does. She works her hand faster and with purpose, fucking Rosa with three fingers while circling on her clit with two fingers of the other, and Rosa screams and swears and screams again, tipping over, spasming in Holtzmann’s hands as she shakes her way down. Holtzmann doesn’t take her eyes off her the whole time. 

Finally, Rosa uncoils. Holtzmann sticks two thoughtful fingers in her mouth. “Hmm,” she hums around them. “Can’t wait to see how long I can make you hold off when it’s my mouth on you.” 

“You’ll have to wait in line,” Rosa says, dragging her back down to the bed beside her.

—

Rosa’s on desk duty until her arm heals, which she’s ticked about. Peralta, who’s right there with her, has repeatedly tried to move his desk into the break room because of her, quote, “gnarly vibes.”

“How is she any gnarlier than usual?” Gina had asked, guileless, and Rosa had wondered the same thing, honestly. She’s getting soft.

This means that when the call comes in, only the three of them are around to answer.

“We have a report of a Jack Russell Terrier digging in the trash cans behind the YMCA on 15th,” Jake says.

Rosa looks up, grateful for the interruption. “And?”

“Its tail just fell off,” he says. Rosa watches a grin grow on his face like the sunrise. “Zombie dog!”

“Oh, lord,” Rosa says. “Gina, if Holt asks, tell him it was an emergency.” 

“Sure sounds like one.” Gina returns to pecking at her phone. 

Admittedly, they should have maybe called for backup before they left the station. But Rosa truly had not expected the zombie dog to be quite so… _fearsome_. 

“Hi,” she says into the phone. “No, no, I know we do. But, um. Could we maybe meet a little early? Like, now?” 

Jake looks up at her and waggles his eyebrows. He looks disturbingly delighted for someone currently leaning his entire body weight, belly-down, on a metal tub that smells like old gym socks.

“Shut up,” Rosa says. “No, not you. Yeah, 15th and 7th. Hurry. Please.” 

“If you two lovebirds wanna spend a little quality time,” Jake starts.

“It’s like you want me to sic that thing on you.” Rosa gingerly nudges the tub with her boot. Something slams itself against her toe, and she hurriedly pulls away. “Do you want me to take a shift on the tub?”

“Nah,” Peralta says. He scoots around a bit. “Wishbone’s mad, but he’s a li’l guy.”

“It’s like you never saw _Cujo_ ,” Rosa says. A car door slams nearby, and she looks up just in time to see Tolan and Holtzmann round the corner. The day is unseasonably warm; Holtzmann’s tied her jumpsuit around her waist. The sun kisses her strong, bare shoulders. Rosa tries not to stare, and then remembers she can, and then smiles.

“Hey,” says Tolan. “We got a yapper?”

“Big time,” says Rosa. “Seems like those PSAs Gilbert’s putting out aren’t exactly getting the job done.” 

“That’s what I keep telling her,” Tolan says. “We’re just giving them ideas.”

“I mean, this guy looked _pretty_ cute,” says Jake. “Apart from the slime, and the teeth, and the unholy rage.” He looks thoughtful. “I can’t really blame whoever tried to bring him back.”

“Please take care of it so I don’t have to explain to Amy why I let you go home with some kid's undead dog,” says Rosa. Holtzmann tilts a smile at her and lifts her UV blaster.

“On my count, let it loose,” she says. “3..2..1…UP!” 

The thing barely has time to launch itself at Jake’s unprotected midsection before Holtzmann zaps it. Tolan pounces, stuffing it into the customized containment tank they’ve begun to carry around now that corporeal manifestations—or “corps,” as everyone but Yates and Gilbert calls them—are getting more and more common. She pats the outside, almost affectionately. “We’ll take it back to the lab and run some tests, see if it’s exhibiting any kind of new and different funkery.” 

“What are you going to do with it after?” Jake says, all innocence. Rosa yanks Holtzmann around the corner before she can hear Tolan’s response—if she can’t hear this conversation, she can pretend it’s not happening. 

“So I think I might be just about off the clock,” Rosa says. “And I’d rather not go back to the office and explain to Holt why this counts as desk duty.” She jerks her chin back toward Tolan and Peralta. “Do you have to take this thing back too?”

“As it happens,” Holtzmann says, “I am also off the clock.” She leans in and tugs one of Rosa’s curls. She smells like oil and sweat. Rosa wants to drown in it. She kisses Holtzmann open-mouthed, one hand coming up to grip the back of her shirt collar, feeling like the city is pulling them as close to its horizon as anyone ever gets, both of them alive and whole and entwined in the bright October afternoon.  

Then Holtzmann pulls away. Rosa tries not to tense.

But Holtzmann smiles. “Are you gonna take me home or what, Officer Diaz?”

“Definitely the first one,” Rosa says, and does.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic took me so long to finish that Rosa Diaz actually came out of the closet (One Of Us), got a girlfriend, and broke up with that girlfriend in the time it took me to write it. (Also, I JUST HAVE TO SAY that I wrote that throwaway find-my-friends joke before it actually appeared in the show, suggesting that out of any of the 9-9 characters, Charles Boyle speaks to my soul most deeply.) Thank you to boots for the kind beta and for the endless cheerleading.


End file.
